Translational Research Program (TRP)

"The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society TRP grant funding has been truly transformative for me and has been a major stepping stone in my career as a physician-scientist. The philosophy of LLS closely aligns with our patients' greatest need. I am very inspired by LLS and the wonderful people that work here! In our TRP grant we further study the role of STAT3 and its upregulation in leukemic stem cells. We are testing combinations of FDA approved drugs with a novel antisense inhibitor of STAT3 in therapy resistant cell lines. Our greatest hope is to be able to provide more therapeutic options for our patients with relapsed/refractory hematologic malignancies."

Aditi Shastri, MBBS
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Antisense inhibition of STAT3 as a therapeutic strategy against leukemic stem cells

"The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a funding agency that has really transformed the field of hematopoietic malignancies by targeting adequate funding to exciting and challenging basic research and translational projects. In this project we are attempting to target stress response in pediatric T-cell leukemia (T-ALL), and LLS funding will let us develop genetic tools and test compound combinations, that will hopefully lead to a future clinical trial."

Iannis Aifantis, PhD
NYU Langone Health

Targeting the stress response machinery in pediatric T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL)

"The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has generously supported our research program in hematological malignancies for many years. This new Translational Research Program award is based on our discovery that a sizable subset of follicular lymphomas activates a pathway called autophagy that allows for tumor cell survival under limited nutrient conditions. Such stressful starvation conditions are postulated to exist in crowded enlarged lymph nodes or other organs infiltrated with lymphoma. With support from this grant we are trying to understand additional aspect of this survival mechanism, which we hope will inform us on novel strategies to treat follicular lymphoma. To develop such novel treatments, we are commencing with screens to identify new compounds that inhibit autophagy and aim at developing a clinical trial that will target activated autophagy as a vulnerability in follicular lymphoma."

Sami Nimer Malek, MD
University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center

Targeting v-ATPase mutations and activated autophagic flux in follicular lymphoma

"I am very grateful to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for awarding me with this Translational Research Program grant. This critical funding will help our team advance targeted and immunotherapeutic treatments for infants and babies under the age of five with subtypes of acute leukemia who do not respond to standard chemotherapy. We hope that this work will lead to therapies that can cure this aggressive type of leukemia without harming the infants’ growing bodies."

Soheil Meshinchi, MD, PhD
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Novel immunotherapeutic strategies in infants with high risk AML

"I am immensely grateful to receive the LLS funding because it will allow us to shine a light on a critically important mechanism whereby cancer genes are activated and deactivated by changes in the overall structure of the DNA. This type of gene deregulation is brought about by movement of DNA from one chromosome to another leading to cancer gene overexpression by relocation of gene control elements and changes in nuclear DNA organization. Importantly these events can be complex leading to the deregulation of more than one gene simultaneously, which can explain rapid changes in cancer behavior and suggest new ways of predicting how aggressive the cancer will be."

Gareth J. Morgan, MD, PhD, MBBCh, FRCP, FRCPath
NYU Langone Health

Structural Chromosomal Rearrangements and the Multi-Step Progression of Multiple Myeloma

"I am very honored to receive this award from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. These funds will support the development of the liquid biopsy as a diagnostic tool in Hodgkin lymphoma. An unmet medical need in Hodgkin lymphoma, the second most common aggressive lymphoma type, is the early and accurate identification of chemorefractory patients, as they are candidates for treatment intensification to maximize the chances of cure, as well as the early and accurate identification of good-risk patients, as they are candidates for treatment de-escalation to avoid both short and long-term complications of chemo-radiotherapy. If successful, the project will provide an innovative, non-invasive and radiation-free tool for improving disease response assessment in Hodgkin lymphoma. "

Davide Rossi, PhD, MD
Foundation for the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR)

Treatment tailoring by optimized early residual disease assessment in classic Hodgkin lymphoma

"I am honoured and delighted to receive the prestigious Translational Research Program grant from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. This generous support will support our aim to develop more effective treatments for Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS), a disease that is increasing in prevalence given rapidly aging populations worldwide. The best available treatment option for many MDS patients is the drug 5-azacitidine. However, it is only effective in about half of the patients who are treated and the prognosis is poor for those who fail to respond to treatment. In addition, most of those patients who initially respond to treatment will eventually relapse. There is therefore a need to develop new treatment options that will be more effective and durable. With the generous support of the LLS, we aim to pursue some tantalizing leads we have recently uncovered that might shine a light on the path forward towards this eventual goal."

Ashwin Unnikrishnan, PhD
University of New South Wales

Beyond Azacitidine: Investigating new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of MDS